Even Princes William and Harry Were Surprised by Their Emotional Memories of Diana

Princess Diana attends the Vj Day 50th Anniversary Celebration with Prince William and Harry in 1995.

By Antony Jones/Julian Parker/UK Press/Getty Images.

Since Princess Diana’s tragic death in August 1997, the world has watched her surviving sons Princes William and Harry evolve into public adult figures, carrying themselves with the sort of formality and dignitary distance that is customary for British royal family members. So it will likely surprise viewers of HBO’s documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, airing at 10 P.M. ET/PT Monday, to see William and Harry uncharacteristically open up about their mother—sharing deeply personal memories and photographs of the woman who died when William was 15 and Harry was just 12.

The audience won’t be the only party shocked by the emotional admissions. Filmmakers Nicolas Kent and Ashley Gething tell Vanity Fair that William and Harry initially had so few memories of their mother that, when they began the filmmaking process, the royals felt the need to caution their collaborators.

“They prefaced their interviews by saying, ‘We don’t actually have that many memories of our mom,’” Gething said Monday morning by phone. “One of the [side effects] of grief and bereavement is that memories kind of get suppressed or obliterated, so I don’t think they knew, and we certainly didn’t know until we began the interview that they would be so candid. But quite quickly when we began the interview, you could almost begin to see the memories surface.”

The key to unlocking the memories was opening up photo albums that Diana herself assembled some 20 years ago for each of her sons. William and Harry had put the albums into storage long ago, presumably because looking at the pages would be too painful. Only when formulating a plan for the documentary—their way of paying homage to their mother on the 20th anniversary of her death—did they suggest revisiting the albums with Kent and Gething.

“What was great was that a lot of those memories ended up being incredibly joyous,” Gething said of filming with the royals, this past January inside Kensington Palace. “They talked about love, they talked about hugs . . . it felt like the first iteration of [them discovering] a really deep set of memories.” (In fact, in the months after filming the documentary, William and Harry have spoken publicly about their difficulties grieving their mother and expanded their humanitarian work to include mental-health advocacy.)

“There is one photograph of Diana hugging Harry, and I think it tells you everything about their relationship,” said the filmmakers of a particularly illuminating image, which inspired one of Harry’s most heartwarming memories of his mother.

"She would just engulf you and squeeze you as tight as possible,” Harry remembers in the documentary. “And being as short as I was then, there was no escape; you were there and you were there for as long as she wanted to hold you. Even talking about it now I can feel the hugs that she used to give us and, you know, I miss that, I miss that feeling, I miss that part of a family, I miss having that mother . . . to be able to give you those hugs and give you that compassion that I think everybody needs.”

In addition to sharing fond memories of their mother, William and Harry also open up about their final phone call with Diana, and about the trauma of having a loved one ripped from their lives so suddenly. Another heart-wrenching moment involves William revealing how he keeps his mother’s memory alive for his young children, George and Charlotte. William and Harry—who collaborated with Kent and Gething on a documentary about another dear family member, 2016’s Our Queen at 90 about Queen Elizabeth—did not make any subject off-limits, and let the filmmakers have complete creative control.

“Obviously they talked very carefully about whether they should make this film,” said Kent. “Having decided to make it, they did want it to be a personal film. There were no parameters, rules, or regulations set at all about what should be put in the film or what should be left out of the film. It was an amazingly free process and they were very courageous in opening up so much and so publicly, especially given the complex circumstances of their mother’s death and the media’s involvement in it.”

“The film is about keeping memories alive, and one way that Harry and William have done that is by living their own lives—supporting charities that were dear to Diana,” continued Kent. “They also keep her memory alive by being who they are. We spoke to dear personal friends of Diana, and one of them said, ‘Every time I see William smile, I see Diana smile. Every time I see that Harry has done something mischievous, I see Diana.’”

Gething said that the film—a rare show of intimacy from the famously reserved royal family—was William and Harry’s “opportunity to introduce Diana to a generation of people who have been born since she died. It was a chance for them to really put on record their story of who their mother was.”

Now that their accounts are on record, William has suggested to press that he is done sharing personal memories of his mother with the public.

“About a week ago, we had a screening at Kensington Palace for the British press,” explained Kent. “I was really struck by the fact that when introducing the film Prince William said, ‘Not only is this the first time we’ve spoken so openly and at length about our mother, it is also the last time.’ They really see this film as a one-off.”

Understanding how rare it was to be given such access and freedom, Kent and Gething never took the task of making this documentary lightly.

“Certainly in the back of our minds, when we were making this film, was the hope that in the years to come Prince William and Prince Harry will think of this as a film they could show to their own children to show them who their grandmother was,” said Kent. “What we’ve tried to do with this documentary is to tell the story of Princess Diana through the eyes of the two people who knew her and loved her most. It is a sort of love letter to their mum, but as we made it, it became increasingly clear it was about two things—love and memories, and how those things are intertwined.”